SILK WICKEDNESS 39

If you actually needed an excuse to come to Barbados , Claudia thought, as she collected two rum punches from the bar, a wedding isn't a bad one.

The tree frogs were just beginning to tune up as she padded back through the gardens to the beach. Guy was sitting in the sand, gazing out at the placid Caribbean, where the dying sun cast liquid gold on the water.

‘If Kate gets through the next two days without murdering her mother, it’ll be a miracle,’ she said as she sat beside him. ‘They’ve had another row. Kate simply cannot share a room with Paul the night before the wedding. It’s bad luck. She’s insisting that I move in with Kate and you move in with Paul for the night.’

‘Fine,’ he said absently.

Not for the first time in the past few days, she gave him a searching look. She’d thought she was imagining it at first, but it had steadily got more noticeable. It had started even before they’d got on the plane - a certain preoccupation, as if something were on his mind.

Hesitantly she aske